Thomas Jefferson and His Time, Volume 1: The Virginian

This is the first volume of distinguished historian Dumas Malone's Pulitzer Prize-winning six-volume work on the life and times of Thomas Jefferson. Based on a myriad of sources, it covers Jefferson's ancestry, youth, education, and legal career; his marriage and the building of Monticello; the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Notes on Virginia; his rich, fruitful legislative career; his highly controversial governorship; and his early services to the development of the West.

Thomas Jefferson and His Time, Volume 3: Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty

Here's the third volume in Dumas Malone's distinguished study of Thomas Jefferson and his time. It deals with one of the most fascinating and controversial periods of Jefferson's life, including the final and most crucial phase of his tenure as secretary of state; his retirement to Monticello; his assumption of the leadership of the opposition party; and the crisis during the "half-war" with France, when political oppression was threatened and the freedom of individuals imperiled.

Thomas Jefferson and His Time, Volume 4: The President, First Term, 1801-1805

The fourth volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography vividly recounts Jefferson's eventful first presidential term. Though characterized by calmer seas than his second presidential voyage, Jefferson's first years in office find him confronting a nation deeply divided following the administrations of Washington and Adams, and many subsequent conflicts. He acquires the vast territory of Louisiana for the United States and challenges the growing power of the federal judiciary.

Thomas Jefferson and His Time, Volume 5: Second Term, 1805-1809

The fifth volume of the Jefferson series completes the story of his presidency, carrying him through his troubled second term, but also to the end of an official career that spanned some 40 years. Here is a vibrant account of Jefferson's disparate activities: sponsoring the Lewis and Clark Expedition, concluding the naval "war" with the Barbary pirates, engaging in a political duel with Chief Justice Marshall over the trial of Aaron Burr, and more.

Thomas Jefferson and His Time, Volume 6: The Sage of Monticello

The Sage of Monticello is the sixth and final volume of Dumas Malone's epic masterwork, Jefferson and His Time, a biography begun in 1943 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1975. More wide ranging than the preceding volumes, The Sage of Monticello recounts the accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties of Jefferson's last 17 years, including his retirement from Washington and the presidency.

Washington: A Life

In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. This crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

John Adams

McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. This is history on a grand scale, an audiobook about politics, war, and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship, and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, it is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.

Marlborough: His Life and Times

John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (1644-1722), was one of the greatest military commanders and statesmen in the history of England. Victorious in the Battles of Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706) and countless other campaigns, Marlborough, whose political intrigues were almost as legendary as his military skill, never fought a battle he didn't win. Marlborough also bequeathed the world another great British military strategist and diplomat, his descendant, Winston S. Churchill.

The American Civil War

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life

General Sherman's 1864 burning of Atlanta solidified his legacy as a ruthless leader. Yet Sherman proved far more complex than his legendary military tactics reveal. James Lee McDonough offers fresh insight into a man tormented by the fear that history would pass him by, who was plagued by personal debts, and who lived much of his life separated from his family.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight, even in his retirement. In American Sphinx, Ellis sifts the facts from the legend to find the heart of the man who, at the grass roots, is no longer liberal or conservative, agrarian or industrialist, pro- or anti-slavery, privileged or populist.

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness

In this lively and compelling biography, Harlow Giles Unger reveals the dominant political figure of a generation. A fierce fighter in four critical Revolutionary War battles and a courageous survivor of Valley Forge and a near-fatal wound at the Battle of Trenton, James Monroe (1751 - 1831) went on to become America's first full-time politician, dedicating his life to securing America's national and international durability.

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

This majestic new biography of James Madison explores the astonishing story of a man of vaunted modesty who audaciously changed the world. Among the Founding Fathers, Madison was a true genius of the early republic. Outwardly reserved, Madison was the intellectual driving force behind the Constitution and crucial to its ratification. His visionary political philosophy and rationale for the union of states - so eloquently presented in The Federalist papers - helped shape the country Americans live in today.

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades", now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.

Brave Companions: Portraits in History

The best-selling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition. Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war”....

The Wealth of Nations

The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic

In Empire of Liberty, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life - in politics, society, economy, and culture.

The English and Their History

Robert Tombs' momentous The English and Their History is both a startlingly fresh and a uniquely inclusive account of the people who have a claim to be the oldest nation in the world. The English first came into existence as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. They have lasted as a recognizable entity ever since, and their defining national institutions can be traced back to the earliest years of their history.

The Johnstown Flood

At the end of the last century, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a booming coal-and-steel town filled with hardworking families striving for a piece of the nation's burgeoning industrial prosperity. In the mountains above Johnstown, an old earth dam had been hastily rebuilt to create a lake for an exclusive summer resort patronized by the tycoons of that same industrial prosperity, among them Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon.

His Excellency: George Washington

Acclaimed author Joseph J. Ellis penned the National Book Award-winning American Sphinx and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers, a fixture on The New York Times best seller list for an entire year, and one of the most popular history books of all time. Now this master historian turns his attention to the most exalted American hero, Founding Father and first President George Washington.

Publisher's Summary

The second of the six volumes of this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography tells the story of the eventful middle years in the life of Thomas Jefferson: his ministry to France in the years just before the French Revolution and during the early stages of that conflict; his service as secretary of state in President George Washington's first cabinet; the crucial period of his first differences with Alexander Hamilton; and the beginnings of his long struggle with the Federalists.

Founding father: listen to the rest of the titles in the Thomas Jefferson and His Time series:

What the Critics Say

Pulitzer Prize winner for history, 1975

"Jefferson and His Time is a masterly achievement of scholarship, the finest biography of Jefferson we have or are likely to have, and a monumental triumph of the senior American historian." (New York Times Book Review)

Mr. Malone goes out of his way to paint Mr. Jefferson in a virtuous light, in spite of the duplicity and intrigue other, more contemporary authors have attributed to him. Mr. Hamilton's contribution to the nation's founding during "Jefferson's Time" is grossly understated as Mr. Malone used Hamilton's known rivalry with Jefferson to promote his champion at the expense of another, equally important founder. This makes for poor reading (listening) as once the bias is manifest, all other unique or "stand-alone" assertions by Mr. Malone lose a degree of credibility.

The work is probably the definitive biography of Thomas Jefferson. It's hard to imagine one more complete or better executed and is a real joy to read. Some reviews on this state that Malone is "pro-Jefferson" and biased towards him. Certainly, Malone is admires Jefferson (I can't imagine spending so many years on one man and not feeling some attachment to him), but he always seems objective regarding the facts in any given controversy and doesn't spare TJ any criticism when warranted. On the other hand, TJ made many enemies over his lifetime and these made numerous claims without necessarily being based in facts. Malone examines each with care and reason. The recording is dated in the late-1990s and was originally on cassette tapes. This is known because there is an occasional slip as she announces the beginning of a new tape from time to time. There are some technical problems and I recall these being mainly in the 1st and 5th volumes. On the whole, they aren't a big deal. Her tone is a bit wry for my taste but she gets the job done (the big, big job).